Alberta Minute: Nurses Negotiation, Calgary Stampede, and Even More Corporate Welfare

Alberta Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Alberta politics.

This Week In Alberta:

• Legislature and committees are on summer break, and the legislature is not set to resume until October 25, though some committee meetings may continue through the summer.
  
  
• Negotiations continue between the United Nurses of Alberta and the provincial government, which has proposed a 3% wage rollback to the union. The provincial government has said that, according to the MacKinnon Panel, nurses in Alberta are paid more than other provinces and Alberta needs to find healthcare savings. The UNA says the government has a revenue problem that it’s trying to balance on front line workers.
  
  
• The provincial government is moving forward the Affordable Supportive Living Initiative and will be adding 343 long term care beds this year in several communities throughout the province. In total, the program will add 2,200 new beds and replace 3,800 existing beds in the province at a cost of $400 million.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The Calgary Stampede opened its doors and welcomed back guests for the first time since 2019. Thousands of guests have attended since the Stampede kicked off with a sneak peek on Thursday and an abbreviated parade on Friday. We are quite glad to see it back.
  
  
• The Prime Minister met Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi in Calgary to announce that the federal government has approved the $5.5 billion Calgary Greenline Project. The provincial government also recently announced it was ponying up about $1.53 billion for the project. Check out our friends at Common Sense Calgary for more on this issue.
  
  
• Finally, the Alberta government announced that it was paying equity holders in the Sturgeon Refinery some $825 million and taking a 50% stake in the refinery. We’d have thought that the provincial government would have learned something from losing over a billion dollars backing Keystone XL, but clearly not. Astoundingly, the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission reported a $2.7 billion net loss for the year last year, seemingly primarily due to problems at the refinery. How do you lose $2.7 billion dollars on free oil you collected as taxes?

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